Ladies Almanack

＂Lesbianism, its flories and sorows, is the subject and quest of this marvelously perverse sentimental journey by Nightwood’s author... A striking lesbian manifesto and a deft parody.＂ --Library Journal

Blending fiction, myth, and revisionary parody and accompanied by the author’s delightful illustrations, Ladies Almanack is a brilliant modernist composition and arguably the most audacious lesbian text of its time. While the book pokes fun at the wealthy Paris expatriates who were Barnes’ literary contemporaries and remains controversial today, it seems to have delighted its cast of characters, which was also the first audience. Arranged by month, it records the life and loves of Dame Evangeline Musset in a robust style taken from Shakespeare and Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Published for the first time in decades, this edition features original illustrations by the author.

Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) is best known as the author of Nightwood, one of the finest novels of the modernist period. She published works in virtually every genre: short stories, poetry, journalism, drama, and pastiche, often illustrated with her own drawings. A notorious figure in the 1920s and 1930s, she became a recluse in her later years and was largely forgotten. But since her death, a major biography and several critical studies have established her importance in 20th-century literature. Dalkey Archive Press has reissued her Nightwood, Ryder, and Ladies Almanack.